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Aurelia
The High Kingdom of Aurelia is a nation found on the continents of Europe, North America, Asia and Oceania. It is a world-spanning nation with a long history of seemingly-reckless expansionism and belligerence, which many say has not stopped at all even into the 21st century. Nevertheless, it is a hub of multiculture and of the arts, befitting its status as the "Top Nation" of the world. History Medieval and Renaissance Aurelia's history diverges from us as the Anglo-Saxon advance into Britain is stopped early, and they only have the east coast ("Saxland"), leaving a far-bigger Wales ("Cymru") Alba (our Scotland) is annexed in the 1300s, Hibernia (once known as Eire) fully by the 1600s, Saxland in 1419. Albion (later the Federated Realms of Albion and Hibernia) gains a reputation as a belligerent player for its various wars, but also as a successful combatant that judges its wars carefully before throwing its sword in. Constantly pushing further and further using aggressive tactics portraying it as somewhat unpredictable and belligerent, it gained far more lands than it actually colonised. Only Nova Hibernia, Chesapeake and Pennsylvania was actually theirs, the rest were conquered over time. Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries In the late 18th century, the coalition of nations sick of Albion-Hibernia's belligerence (which gained it everything north of Mexico and east of Alaska) worked to undermine it, and saw a golden opportunity in the former-Spanish colony of Nueva Aragon. Stirring stuff up there, funding revolutionaries, and all that, and once it declared independence, they jumped to its side. In the end, Albion-Hibernia lost. An unthinkable event has happened. The establishment was in shock. They had to recognize Nueva-Aragonese independence and cede Powell-Land to the Dutch (now called Zuidland). For the next hundred years, the Federated Realms were quiet. Not weak, but not in their typical belligerent extremism. And then the Californian War of Independence and Mexican Revolt happened in the 1850s. Albion-Hibernia's swiftness to take revenge on Spain, taking the entirety of California and forcing Spain to recognize Mexico's independence was humiliating to the once-great Kingdom, something A-H took great glee in. Annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii, forcing France to give up on Aotearoa (New Zealand) and threatened Russia until it sold Alaska. The old Albion-Hibernia was back, and lusting for revenge on the world that so wronged it. It may have talked a big game, intimidating its opponents, but internally, A-H was a mess by the late 19th century. Its main political parties, the Liberals and Conservatives, similarly supported A-H's belligerence, even if for superficially-different reasons. The poor farmers were disgruntled and radicalising, the workers desired justice and democracy and the subjected regions had people talking of independence. Twentieth Century It all came crashing down in the 1920s. The Farmer-Liberal government failed to appease the radicalised farmers and miners of the West, and they declared independence as the Union of Agrarian and Industrial Communes. The Communist Party split in half as the Western ("Agrarianist") MPs walked out of Parliament in solidarity with the revolutionaries. Even when the rising social-reformist Democratic Party roundly criticised "blood-tainted revolutions", it was too late. The UAIC was rising up and seizing the means of production by the gun, killing any who opposed them. Albion-Hibernia's many rivals jumped on it and tried to take what they wanted. Nueva Aragon, their creation, was not one of those who did so as A-H knew that Nueva Aragon presented a juicy start to cut into the industrial belly of Albish North America. Thus A-H and Nueva Aragon were on very cordial relations. Five years of A-H's enemies trying to cut the belligerent Top Nation down once again. They succeeded in breaking apart Albish North America into three as the UAIC gained independence, but the stalemate forced them to give up any other ambitions. Albion-Hibernia's remains came together in New Amsterdam and decided to have a new Constitutional Convention, "so none of this precious Realm of ours will shatter once more in such turmoil as has Just Happened". Great reforms happened that wiped away many of Albion-Hibernia's old laws and customs, creating a new country out of the ashes. In the end, the realm was federated instead of having de facto devolution. The Viceroyalties were created, the previous Provinces (which had considerable autonomy) were abolished and Albion-Hibernia itself died as it rebranded itself Aurelia. Thus was born the High Kingdom of Aurelia in 1932. The old A-H's wild-eyed belligerence failed to carry over to its' successor, and instead, the world saw a far different country. Albion-Hibernia was a country of war, while Aurelia was a country of culture. A country that believed in "Peace with Honour." Namely, peace backed up by steel. Despite its' belligerence, A-H was a popular place for immigrants to go to, as they saw it as a country of prosperity and of good work, and of carefully judged war. It was belligerent merely because it had lots of opportunities and chose to take advantage of them. Many of the European states were fuelled by poorly-judged wars and their soil were quite red from shed blood. After Aurelia's birth and the world had to get used to an extremely warlike country becoming one of peace, Aurelia's economy thrived while others' suffered in the Depression of 1942, leading to even more immigrants coming to the country for work and food, making Aurelia even more multicultural and contributing to its' nickname "the Patchwork Kingdom". In the late 1950s, Aurelia went to war again, and against China, the growing superpower. Many thought Aurelia would fail badly. They seem to have forgotten what Aurelia is. It may be a country of peace, but its' steel is blood-tested and cried once more in the fields of China. By 1964, China was broken, civil wars were happening and this once-great superpower was pleading for peace. The great city of Hong Kong, a formerly Portuguese city taken over by China, was now annexed into Aurelia. Aurelia, along with its' former enemies (still in shock over how it broke China) formed the Assembly of Nations in 1968, "an organization for world peace". To its' credit, world peace has indeed happened, even if it was broken repeatedly by wars. The Almost-War of the 1960s-1980s pushed the Assembly of Nations to its limits as Aurelia and Brazil entered a tense stalemate, dividing up the Western Hemisphere into two mutually-exclusive spheres of influence and actively working against the other, while stocking up terrifyingly high levels of nuclear missiles. Thankfully, both agreed to mutually disarm their missiles, draw back from their spheres of influence and enter a new era of co-operation in 1990. A good movie set in this tense era is Dr. Strangelove. The Indonesian War of 2001-now was due to a shocking attack on New Amsterdam by Indonesian terrorists wishing for their nation's independence from the Netherlands. The War has proven to be a big money-sink for Aurelia and its allies, but the leaders of the terrorist cabal still remains hidden in Indonesia. Nevertheless, Aurelia has pushed hard for Indonesia to be free from Dutch rule, angering the Netherlands. One reason for Aurelia not being a belligerent country is that it knows it cannot afford that anymore. Its' national unity is low, Quebec was close to leaving, and the noises coming from Nova Hibernia is worrying. But Aurelia is Top Nation, and the world is indeed its' oyster. It just came at a high price.